If you've ever wondered how to measure social media, public relations, public affairs, media relations, internal communications or blogs you're in the right spot. In this space I'll be regularly ranting and raving about measurement standards, research news, techniques and the latest developments in the world of PR research and evaluation. When I'm not here, you can find me in my garden in Durham New Hampshire or in my sailboat out on the Oyster River.

How to introduce me

For those who bear the burden of introducing me at a conference...

Katie Delahaye Paine (twitter: KDPaine) is the CEO and founder of KDPaine & Partners LLC and author of, Measuring Public Relationships, the data-driven communicators guide to measuring success. She also writes the first blog and the first newsletters dedicated entirely to measurement and accountability. In the last two decades, she and her firm have listened to millions of conversations, analyzed thousands of articles, and asked hundreds of question in order to help her clients better understand their relationships with their constituencies.
People talk, we listen..

October 10, 2012

Grandmotherly thoughts on my 60th birthday

As it happens, I’m not a grandmother, but I am turning 60 today
which like or not, does provide some moments of reflection. Whenever someone asks me if I
have kids, I say no, I’ve just had plants and
companies instead. Now I might just add “industry standards” to that list.

First the
plants. I'm a gardener, and every year I bring hundreds of plants, annuals as
well as perennials to life. Some come from seeds sewn while in the depth of a
New Hampshire winter, that then explodes into riot of color all summer.

Some
are slow learners. I dig them up, cut them apart, give them a bit of vitamins
and an encouraging talking to, and leave them alone for a few months while they
decide whether to live or die. Eventually they put forth tiny green shoots and
I know that there's one more new living thing I can send off into the world. I
talk to these new babies constantly, telling them to survive the thunderstorm,
or the unusual heat wave or the aphid assault. I order them not to wilt, to
survive dammit because the world needs more of you. Eventually I send them off
to “college” – planting them in the ground, trusting
that their healthy enough and have learned enough survival skills to cope with
the New Hampshire climate. I visit them,
wait for their offspring, and if they multiply, take their offspring off their
hands and give them a home of their own.
Sure, they don’t talk back, and don’t cost as much, but they are every bit my legacy.

As to companies,
I gave birth to my first one in 1987 and
sent it off to its adult married life with Medialink in 1999, which was, as my
friend describes her daughter’s unpleasant boyfriend: “an adequate first husband.” Later I saw it
remarried to what is now Cision. Today, in that perfect circular irony, just as
my mother saw me as competition, I now compete just as fiercely with that first
offspring.

I gave
birth to my second company a decade ago. Older and wiser at the time, I had
much more humble aspirations for it. And, as so many second children do, it
surprised me, exceeding all my expectations for innovation and basic survival
skills. It survived not one but two recessions, the onslaught of VC-funded
automated measurement tools, a bitter ideological divorce from a partner, and a
bunch of bad decisions.

Today,
that second offspring is a profitable measurement powerhouse, doing things no
other company can do, with the capability to do custom quality research anywhere
in the world. Most importantly it is actually doing what I’ve been dreaming and talking about doing for two decades:
tying PR and Social Media to the goals
and missions of the organization.

Finally,
as I write this, I can add industry standards to that list of offspring. The
newly announced social media standards were birthed, nurtured and raised by a
very large village. As with any successfully launched offspring, the seeds for those standards started years
ago, when Jack Felton brought a bunch of us together and said “what are we going to do about standards for measuring PR?” From that was born the IPR Measurement Commission. That “family” raised the idea of standards
back in 1995, and now they’re coming to life through the
broad Coalition and Conclave efforts. But I’d
like to think that I was midwife, since it was in my living room that the
Conclave first gathered, and where the latest round of standards were decided
up on last week.

And of
course, there are now three smaller siblings, my books: Measuring the Networked
Non-Profit that was published just this week, Measure What Matters, that
preceded it by just a year, and Measuring Public Relationships the first-born.

I'm not
sure what are harder, raising kids, writing book, raising standards or growing companies but I
would argue that the same truths apply to all of them. They all take alot of help and support from family, community and friends. To all of you, thank you for getting me this far.

They also take love, passion, commitment and the willingness
to stand up to whatever life throws in
your path. So take that "age," I going for a run, and whatever you put in my path, I'll either run around, jump over or take with me.

When I turned 60, I took turns sitting very still and throwing myself into workouts to prove that 60 didn't mean what it meant when my mother turned 60. Thank you for a thoughtful reflection that doesn't generate nearly as much sweat and sore muscles as mine did. Love you, KDP.

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Measure What Matters

Katie Delahaye Paine's great little book Measure What Matters shows organizations of all sizes how to evaluate and improve their public relations and social media efforts. OrderMeasure What Matters now.